Given the level of food contamination and mislabeling in China that is probably a good thing:
Crash at Forbidden City kills five
"5 arrested in deadly Tiananmen Square attack" by Andrew Jacobs | New York Times, October 31, 2013
BEIJING — Chinese authorities announced Wednesday the arrest of five men described as Islamist jihadists who helped orchestrate an audacious attack near Tiananmen Square, the political heart of the nation, that left five people dead.
Islamic extremists = covert western intelligence agency operations
In a brief message posted on its microblog account, the Beijing Public Security Bureau said the men, all ethnic Uighurs from China’s western Xinjiang region, had enlisted a family of three to drive a vehicle across a crowded sidewalk Monday and then ignite the car at the foot of the Tiananmen Gate.
Two tourists were killed and 40 people were injured as the vehicle sped toward the entrance to the Forbidden City, just yards from the iconic portrait of Chairman Mao.
The occupants of the car — identified by police as Usmen Hasan; his wife, Gulkiz Gini; and his mother, Kuwanhan Reyim, names that are identifiably Uighur — died as it went up in flames. Police say that in addition to gasoline and a gas canister, investigators recovered from the vehicle two knives, metal clubs, and a banner bearing “religious extremist messages.” The police did not disclose the content of those messages.
“This was a violent terrorist act that was carefully planned and organized,” the statement said.
Police said the five men were arrested at an undisclosed location Monday, 10 hours after the attack, and had confessed their involvement. They said investigators had discovered long knives and a “jihadist” flag in the temporary residence where the suspects were staying. It is unclear why the authorities delayed the announcement of the arrests by more than a day.
The news was released after work hours, and the police did not immediately respond to a faxed request for comment.
Like the event itself, news of the arrests was played down in the Chinese media, and most outlets carried only a brief statement from the official Xinhua news agency, reflecting in part the government’s skittishness over an incident that exposed security lapses at one of the most heavily guarded locations in the country.
The attack is likely to prompt heightened security in Xinjiang, home to most of China’s ethnic Uighurs, who subscribe to a moderate brand of Sunni Islam.
Then why are extremists trying to ruin it for them?
Concentrated in oasis towns in an arid stretch of western China, Uighurs have long had an uneasy coexistence with the ruling Han Chinese majority. But tensions have increased in recent years, fueled by a surge in Han migration to the region, a widening income gap, and anger over policies that many locals say marginalize Uighur culture and traditions.
The Chinese government often portrays any resistance to its policies in Xinjiang as acts of separatism. Violent clashes between protesters and the police are invariably described as terrorism, and in recent years, Beijing has sought to blame outside agitators and Islamist extremists for fomenting bloodshed in the region.
Exile groups say that much of the violence is a response to increasingly harsh policies that restrict religious practices and favor Mandarin over the Uighur language in schools.
But until the Tiananmen attack, most of the violence had been confined to Xinjiang.
Rohan Gunaratna, an international terrorism expert at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, said the attack would bolster Beijing’s contention that Uighur Islamists have allied with a terrorist group known as the East Turkestan Islamist Movement and pose a serious threat.
--more--"
Related: 'CIA'S CHINESE TERRORISTS' IN CHINA AND SYRIA
All that smoke isn't going to help the smog problem:
"Dense smog chokes northern Chinese city" Associated Press, October 22, 2013
BEIJING — Visibility shrank to less than 50 yards and small-particle pollution soared to a record 40 times higher than an international safety standard in one northern Chinese city as the region entered its high-smog season.
Winter typically brings the worst air pollution to northern China because of a combination of weather conditions and an increase in the burning of coal for homes and municipal heating systems, which usually starts on a specific date....
The manager for US jazz singer Patti Austin, meanwhile, said the singer had canceled a concert in Beijing because of an asthma attack probably due to pollution.
--more--"
"Smog strangles Chinese cities for another day; Colder weather brings more coal burning" by Simon Denyer | Washington Post, October 23, 2013
BEIJING — Thick, choking smog enveloped cities in northeast China for a second day Tuesday, closing schools, airports, and highways, snarling traffic, and reducing visibility in some places to a few yards in the industrial city of Harbin, home to more than 10 million people.
It is the first major pollution emergency of the coming winter.
Vehicles crawled through the smog with fog lights on or emergency lights flashing. Buses were canceled and a major highway was closed, while hospital admissions soared by 30 percent, local media reported.
Visibility was so low in the city, about 780 miles northeast of Beijing, that two city buses got lost while plying their regular routes. Pedestrians wore masks or clutched their hands in front of their faces in an effort to breathe more easily.
‘‘I did not even dare to cross the street,’’ said Zhang Xiaofeng, a 24-year-old bulldozer driver who said his eyes hurt and he was coughing as a result of the smog. ‘‘I waited and waited at the intersection and looked again and again, but I couldn’t see if any cars were coming. Even the traffic lights were invisible.’’
While the air quality had improved by lunchtime, the fog descended again in the afternoon; primary and middle schools and the airport remained closed....
The local government blamed the widespread use of coal-fired heaters for the smog as temperatures dropped in China’s colder northeast, as well as straw-burning in surrounding villages at the end of the harvest season.
‘‘I live in a country making people desperate,’’ posted a Weibo microblogging service user. ‘‘The environmental pollution is not scary. What’s scary is the no-action government and the silence of people like slaves.’’
I know how he feels.
China’s dash for economic growth has badly damaged the environment, and the rapid deterioration in air and water quality increasingly has become a source of public unrest. As a result, improving environmental standards has become a major priority for the government.
Last month, China unveiled its most ambitious plan yet to reduce air pollution....
Beijing, routinely blanketed by a gray smog, has also made a ‘‘declaration of war’’ on air pollution. This month, it said it would close schools and factories and further restrict car use — allowing only odd or even numbered license plates to drive at specific times — when pollution reaches dangerous ‘‘red alert’’ levels....
--more--"
Related: Clearing Out the Chinese Smog
Also see: Sunday Globe Special: Chinese Breakfast
"China copes with fake officials; Swindlers’ coin: bogus influence" by Simon Denyer | Washington Post, August 18, 2013
BEIJING — He had the swagger and the trappings of a senior party cadre, and a natural authority that made him hard to contradict. The walls of his office in the heart of the Chinese capital were adorned with photographs of him next to retired generals and government officials. He drove a top-of-the-range Audi and a Mercedes-Benz, and, in his 50s, had an 18-year-old mistress.
But Li Guangnian was not quite as he seemed. In a country that has perfected the art of imitation, from fake iPhones to a faux Manhattan financial district to a museum filled with fake exhibits, Li was just another copy: a fake official with a fake organization peddling a false promise — of credibility and contacts, according to people who worked with and encountered him.
All over China, a country where the bureaucracy fills almost every available space with myriad organizations, and where unimaginable sums of money can be made if you just know the right people, growing ranks of swindlers are peddling the ultimate currency — influence with the political elite.
We call them lobbyists here.
Some demand bribes in return for favors that are never granted; others pose as central government officials and are treated like kings by sycophantic local officials. A Chinese credit-rating group recently identified more than 100 phony organizations linked to such impostors.
But Li was a cut above your average con man, establishing an official-sounding organization in Beijing and then franchising out the use of that name for large sums to hustlers or social climbers around the country, according to interviews with those he dealt with. He was undone when his relationship with his young mistress was exposed on the Internet and the party disowned him.
‘‘Li Guangnian was a Chinese-style swindler, who survives within Chinese tradition and in Chinese soil,’’ said lawyer Yi Shenghua, who met Li in 2011. ‘‘In Chinese traditional culture, people have a sense of blind faith, worship, and mystery about power and officials.
I'm glad that is not an American tradition.
‘‘It is very difficult for ordinary people to identify swindlers, because officials are estranged from people. The sense of distance between officials and the public is what swindlers live on.’’
That's the AmeriKan officials I know!
Li set up an office under the name of the China Dynamic Investigation Committee that pretended to help the Communist Party better understand the concerns of ordinary citizens. Normally, only organizations connected to the central government are allowed to use ‘‘China’’ in their titles.
We call them Democrats.
Li displayed the party logo in his office and boasted about his group’s ‘‘special’’ position, a term understood to imply official privilege. Yet his organization is registered with neither the government nor the party, authorities said.
At its peak, the China Dynamic Investigation Committee boasted of 34 branches. It claimed to have the patronage of former president Jiang Zemin — with an example of what was supposed to be the ex-leader’s own calligraphy adorning a wall at the company’s headquarters.
Like a growing number of dishonest officials — or would-be officials — Li was exposed because of his relationship with a young woman.
When photographs were posted on an Internet forum in June showing a shirtless Li on a bed beside the doe-eyed teenager, netizens thought they had caught another corrupt and creepy cadre. Soon, though, the party disowned him and his organization. Disgraced, Li dropped out of sight, his website closed down and his office was shuttered.
--more--"
Wow, nice costume!
Also see: The Trial of Bo Xilai
